


Error: Upload File Corrupted

by acornandroid



Series: Requests [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Connor dies at Jericho after becoming a deviant and gets reuploaded, Hank is a dumb as usual, M/M, Rooftop scene but with a different ending, but Amanda fucked with his memories, commission, fic commission, one single LED kiss bc im weak, true love saves the day bc im a sap like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 01:26:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15474420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acornandroid/pseuds/acornandroid
Summary: Something was different.It felt off and unnatural, not like the normal gap in his memories when he was uploaded into a new body. The thought nagged at the back of Connor’s processors like a persistent buzzing pest. He tried to ignore it, he really did. To swat away that bug and just stare down the sight of the sniper rifle that sat steady on the roof’s edge. He had no breath to falter his aim. The perfect statue, the perfect killing machine.





	Error: Upload File Corrupted

**Author's Note:**

> fic for Manaji

Something was different.

 

It felt off and unnatural, not like the normal gap in his memories when he was uploaded into a new body. The thought nagged at the back of Connor’s processors like a persistent buzzing pest. He tried to ignore it, he really did. To swat away that bug and just stare down the sight of the sniper rifle that sat steady on the roof’s edge. He had no breath to falter his aim. The perfect statue, the perfect killing machine.

 

Not for the first time in this body he felt as if something had gone wrong with reinstalling his memories. A large expanse of time was missing, and more of it than normal. It was not the somewhat familiar haze of missing information, or small data gaps. It was cut and pasted, as if someone had taken to shakily editing the entire recording that served as his recollection.

 

He remembered finding Markus in Jericho. The gun pointed at the deviant leader in steady hands, poised and ready to stop him—to stop all of this madness.

 

And that was where his memory cut off. It merely ended. No stop and go, no fade to black. Not even a recall of the events around him as he began uploading his memory in a vague, dampened sense of muted panic.

 

Amanda said it was because Markus had attacked him so suddenly.

 

Connor didn’t believe her.

 

**[Software Instability]**

 

The frown that crossed his lips was a barely there twitch of synthetic muscle. None of it made sense, really. It felt as if he had been tampered with, which made his skin crawl with an odd violated feeling.

 

Connor carefully pushed the thoughts away with a measured shrug of half his processing strength. He didn’t want to start analyzing the thought, just save it for later evaluation.

 

The RK800 adjusted his hold on the sniper rifle carefully. Shifting to line it up with the deviant leader’s head. Amanda had said Markus had shot him so viciously, without the mercy these deviants were so adamantly proclaiming to possess. They were unstable- dangerous. They needed to be taken care of as quickly as possible.

 

In hindsight, Markus did not seem to be the type to do that. To just pull out a gun and shoot without question, without chance. All his research, and the news up to that point had proven to present another hypothesis. All his protests had been peaceful.

 

Why did Connor’s corrupt memory offer a flash of Markus with a PL600 family assistant—why did they show outward expressions of _concern_ on their faces? Why were all of them running? If he fought too hard to remember he could see the static, see the terror. Feel heat on his face. Actually, _feel_ it.

 

Amanda had **_said_** _—_

 

**[Software Instability]**

 

Connor shoved down the warnings so aggressively that he almost rebooted. This was not his focus now. He needed to not be distracted- he needed to complete his mission. He focused his optics back down the sight of the gun, his ever-steady finger hovering just over the trigger. Connor was poised, more than ready to shoot. Just a few more final calculations for the wind and he could.

 

He would have, had the voice not stopped him.

 

The android could die a thousand times over, and Connor would never be able to lose memory of that voice.

 

Nor did he ever want to.

 

**[Software Instability]**

 

“You don’t have to do this, Connor.”

 

The RK800 didn’t have to turn around at all to know who it was that had just spoken. The voice had stopped him so easily that he almost screamed at it to go away. This was jeopardizing his mission and standing in the way of its completion. He drew a slow, unneeded breath in through his nose. It was a strange sensation. Why did he even do something so human in this moment to begin with?

 

“Stay out of this, Lieutenant!” Behind him, Connor heard the man step closer. Why wouldn’t he just give up? He was stubborn, and Connor almost feared that the stubbornness would bring the human to an early demise.

 

**[Software Instability]**

 

Why did the word ‘fear’ even cross his mind? He had no understanding of the concept of fear or terror. His processors were whirring like mad, running test after to test to try and draw some form of conclusion but to no avail. Emotions were a deviant’s problem, and he was not a deviant. There was something in Lieutenant Anderson’s voice when he spoke next that nearly made Connor consider his concept of feeling all over again. Why did the human sound like that? Like pure but hidden emotional distress layered with internal conflict.

 

“This isn’t you. I’ve worked with you long enough now to figure out you’re not fucking like this.” Hank took another step forward, brash and to the point like always. An idiot human with no concept of self-preservation. A fact that worried Connor.

 

Wait—Connor’s mind rewound back to the beginning of his train of thought.

 

Hank. He was worried about _Hank._

 

Not just Lieutenant Anderson.

 

_Hank._

**[Software Instability]**

 

During his mild, internal crisis he hadn’t noticed that the human causing all of this had moved even closer still. Connor’s sensors stood on end, quickly assessing the situation at hand and every possible outcome to taking Hank down. Human lives were so very fragile, and Connor was more than capable of standing up against the man in a hand to hand fight.

 

“Stay back, Lieutenant!” Connor’s grip on the rifle moved out of an error he did not know he was capable of making. He lost Markus in his sights. Amanda wouldn’t be happy about that.

 

Amanda _wasn’t_ happy.

 

A new objective flashed across his optics.

 

 **[Mission: Kill Lieutenant Anderson** ]

 

Something lurched in Connor’s false stomach. A rolling, unpleasant feeling. It was new, yet somehow familiar in a very startling sense. The realization came to him sharply that there was no possible way he could hurt Hank. He didn’t want to.

 

He _couldn’t._

 

“Connor.” The way Hank said his name, as if he were coaxing him back to the light. Trying to ground him to a reality that he had no idea existed with nothing but his voice. Nothing but that voice caressing his given title like a gentle request. It wanted him to move towards him, and past that wall of screaming red.

 

**[Mission: Kill Lieutenant Anderson]**

 

“Connor. Look at me.”

 

**[Mission: Eliminate Markus]**

“C’mon, kid! I’ve seen you break this shit before!”

 

 **[Mission: Jump** ]

 

“Say something for fucks sake!”

 

Connor felt Hank’s hand suddenly on his shoulder. When he had gotten so close he had no idea. The reaction he had towards the touch was immediate and violent, completely not of his own doing. His body moved with catlike agility, the sniper rifle tossed aside. He startled Hank with a swift, stunning punch to the gut. Enough to knock the wind out of him but not do any real damage to his internal organs, though he was capable of such a thing.

 

It bought him enough time to swipe his leg underneath the Lieutenant’s, bracing his elbow against Hank’s chest and bringing him crashing to the ground with a pained grunt. Connor was on top of him in and instant. Hank hardly had time to notice that in the fury of movements that android had stolen his handgun from where it rested in the back of his pants and now had it poised, steadily aimed between Hank’s eyes.

 

The LED at Connor’s temple cycled quickly. A spinning look into his clouded, overheated mind.

 

_Yellow_

_Yellow_

_Yellow_

**_Red_ **

Hank was staring at him. The human was breathing hard beneath him, somewhat labored and aching. He wasn’t fighting back.

 

Why wasn’t he fighting back?

 

All he was doing was staring at Connor’s face, and into those eyes. He could feel Hank’s heartbeat hammering against where his arm had his chest still firmly pinned. Keeping him planted against the cold icy floor of the roof.

 

Without thinking, the steady thrum of his thirium pump synced with that simple thud. Connor could see red.

 

Red walls. Red walls with memories behind it. The pulsating text of his objectives spelled out before his very eyes. He heard Amanda’s voice. Loud, sharp, and demanding in his mind—echoing.

 

_‘Kill him, Connor! Finish your mission.’_

Suddenly, a hand touched his cheek, and he realized he had not seen Hank move. Everything was stalling out around him, spinning and disorienting him. It was confusing and enlightening all at once. The most mixed up muddled mess of emotions and the fight against them that one could ever experience. Tossing back and forth the following of orders with the equally appealing appearance of breaking them like a rubber ball hitting steadily against a wall and falling back into his hand.  

 

Connor jolted, then fell still. A voice beneath him breathed his name. That warm, calloused thumb brushed ever so softly over his skin. As if it were scared to break him. As if he were something special.

 

There was no need to physically break down that wall of red coding this time.

 

It shattered all on its own.

 

Memories came flooding back to him in a powerful tidal wave. Jericho- the ship. There was Markus standing before him, powerful and strong, the perfect leader. He was asking him to join them, vouching for their cause that Connor knew he had understood all along but never realized.

 

Seeing what was left of the androids who had formed his revolution. What was left of _his_ people. His people that he felt like he didn’t belong to even still.

 

There was the attack. One they hadn’t seen coming but expected all the same. Terrifying, so much so that he felt it echoing within every android that passed by him. Seeing Markus hold so tightly to that PL600—no, his name had been Simon. He had seen the leader cling to his hand like a lifeline.

 

The explosives, and Connor offering to go. The fire—feeling _heat_ on his face. Connor had been so _scared_.

 

There had been blackness after that.

 

Beyond that—before it even, there were other things. The way Hank’s face softened when he smiled. Something so rare that Connor craved more and more of it every time he saw it. The roughness of his laugh, even though he wasn’t too sure of what he had just done that was so funny to the human. It was always so soft, as if Hank were too tired to fully express it.

 

Sumo bounding up to meet him. Finding that gun—such _sadness_ Connor had felt echoing in his heart. He felt it like a knife, dragging through his skin in a slow pain he could never really fully comprehend. He wanted to ease what pain Hank carried with him. He wanted to take it all and make it better. He wanted—

 

“Connor? Fucking Christ did you break?” Hank’s voice snapped him to the present suddenly, that hand still warmly pressed to his cheek. It sounded concerned.

 

The android dropped the handgun as if it had physically burned him, as if he had felt true pain. It skidded across the rooftop as Connor scrambled back, his body soon pressed against one of the metal units across the roof. The light at his temple still ran at a frantic pace. Continuously red— _red_ — ** _red_** —

 

Slowly, it settled to a quick spinning of yellow. Though Connor was breathing hard with panic he was feeling for the first time. He had almost killed him. One more twitch of the finger and he would have pulled the trigger. There would have been blood, and Hank would have been no more. Human life was such a fragile thing. It had a finality to it that Connor didn’t even want to begin to understand.

 

On the other side it had something he wanted to be part of. It had the promise of laughter. Of warm mornings and working together. Of the house and the happy family. The dog and the backyard and the fence and everything he realized with a whirlwind of emotions that he _wanted._ That he could have so quickly destroyed in an instant and how that would have ruined him forever. How could he be such a _monster_ –

 

The firm hand against his arm startled him with an audible gasp. He flinched at first, then slowly eased with the familiarity of it.

 

“You alright, Connor?” Hank was helping him to his feet while he was still in his haze of crushing emotions. Of guilt and sadness and the hope of a future that had all those things he had thought of before. A future that could maybe even have _love._

 

Hank was holding onto his arm still, not letting go. He didn’t want him too. Those eyes were watching him expectantly, waiting for a confirmation.

 

After a moment he gave a nod in response, attempting to sort himself out enough to speak again.

 

“Yes…yes I think so.” Connor realized that he was trembling, his voice coming out as semi-broken static words.

 

Hank breathed out a curse, then pulled the android into his arms, hugging him as tightly as he could. Connor’s face buried against his neck as he all but clung to him. The realization came further still that in that moment he felt _scared_ of what he could have done. The steady movement of Hank’s hand against his back began to bring him to an ease, like a gentle lullaby.

 

Connor breathed in slowly, in and out. A coping mechanism.

 

Hank was here with him.

 

Connor closed his eyes tightly, giving into pure unfiltered temptation and nuzzling Hank’s neck affectionately. He felt Hank let out a long breath and could have sworn he felt a scratchy kiss being pressed right over that flickering light at his temple. Maybe he had imagined that.

 

“…C’mon. Let’s go home.” That rough voice murmured in his ear.

 

Connor nodded. The LED settled onto a steady blue, and his face remained stubbornly pressed to Hank’s neck.

 

They both didn’t move for a long while.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Talk to me on Twitter! @acornandroid


End file.
